


Sharp Dressed Bat

by Mithen



Category: DCU - Comicverse
Genre: Costumes, Established Relationship, Humor, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-04
Updated: 2013-01-03
Packaged: 2017-11-09 05:42:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/451989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mithen/pseuds/Mithen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clark finds Bruce's teenage costume sketchbooks when helping to clean the Manor attic.  Hijinks ensue.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A long time ago, a blog posted scans from something called "Knight Gallery," which was a book published in the 1990s that was supposed to be Bruce Wayne's sketchbook of possible Batman designs. Well, it was the 90s, so the results were _hilarious_. I couldn't resist pretending the sketchbook was actually real and letting Clark get his hands on it. All of the lines in italics are taken straight from the sketchbook; you can click on the images to enlarge them!

"Would you care for some lemonade, sir?"

Clark Kent accepted the tall frosted glass from Alfred with a sigh of appreciation. He didn't feel the August heat as painful, of course, but the manor attic was dusty and unpleasantly close. He took a long sip, savoring sweet tartness, and sneaked a glance at Bruce as Alfred handed him his own glass.

Bruce was sweating and there was a smudge of soot along one cheekbone. The summer humidity had turned his usually-glossy hair to a rumpled mess of damp curls, and Clark thought he was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen.

Of course, he thought that all the time already.

As Bruce held the glass--already dripping with condensation--to his flushed forehead, Clark felt the sense of strangeness anew. They'd only been--well, _dating_ wasn't the right word, but-- _seeing each other_ for a few months now, and Clark still found the increasing number of quiet, almost _domestic_ moments incredibly strange. Whether it was helping Damian with a science project (Bruce had to veto several quite lethal-looking options), pruning the hedges, or--as today--cleaning out the attic, there was a vertiginous sense of _coziness_ that Clark found disarming and delightful.

He had known that dating Batman would be thrilling, he had suspected it would be difficult--and it was both of those, in spades.

But he hadn't expected it to be so... _normal_ at times.

Those moments were quickly becoming his favorites in the relationship.

Clark took a long sip of his lemonade and opened up another box. He had noted that August wasn't really the ideal time to be cleaning out an attic, but Bruce had gotten that mulish look on his face and Clark had shrugged and joined him in the dim, dusty space. Clark suspected this cleaning bug was related to Tim moving out--Bruce was clearly trying not to hover, but Clark could tell he worried about his former Robin. So instead of performing surveillance on Tim and his new team, they were up in an attic, combing through old boxes to label, sort, decide what to keep and what to throw away. Bruce had already accumulated three boxes of antiques, and was currently asking Alfred if he thought his great-aunt Millicent's beaded flapper bag would fetch a good enough price at the Wayne charity auction.

The box Clark was working on was marked "Notebooks," and was indeed filled with neatly stacked notes of equations, biology diagrams, and translated paragraphs in painstaking French and Chinese, all in a juvenile version of a bold scrawl that Clark knew well.

 _Not much in here that would fetch much of a price_ , Clark thought, but couldn't help but thumb through the worn pages, marveling at the voraciousness of Bruce's young mind. One of the notebooks jutted out a little bit--bound with leather, not paper--and Clark extracted it from the stack and opened it.

 _I have been preparing myself for this enterprise since the moment I first saw my parents' blood_ , Bruce's dark handwriting leapt out at him. Clark blinked. _While the process of training and study will never cease, it is time to start using what I have learned thus far, time to design and create a new image and identity, an alter ego to counterbalance Bruce Wayne's daytime persona._

Irresolute, Clark's fingers stalled on the corner of the page. He sneaked a look at Bruce out of the corner of his eye, but Bruce wasn't looking at him. He _had_ said Clark was free to go through any of the boxes, Clark thought, knowing it for a rationalization but unable to resist turning the page.

Bruce looked up a few minutes later at a tea-kettle whistling noise to find Clark with his hand pressed to his mouth and his face turning red with repressed hilarity. Bruce's eyes widened as he caught sight of the notebook. "No! No no no!"

Clark dodged his oncoming lunge, lifting the book above his head. When Bruce ricocheted off the wall and came back at him, Clark simply rose into the rafters, snickering. Bruce bounded after him, but it was no good: after a high-speed chase around the attic and among the rafters he had to admit defeat.

"Come on, Clark," he wheedled, looking up with a despairing expression. "Give it back." He looked over at Alfred, who had taken shelter in an alcove when chaos broke loose. "Make him give it back, Alfred."

Alfred beat a hasty retreat from the attic as Clark waved the open notebook. "What, just when it's getting good?"

[](http://pics.livejournal.com/mithen/pic/0002zze7/)Bruce grimaced. "I don't remember exactly what--"

"--I believe you were trying to get over your infatuation with shoulder hooks. With little success," Clark added as Bruce groaned. " _Looks good but probably not practical,_ " he read out loud. "Now there you were wrong, Bruce," he said, shaking a finger. "Shoulder hooks never look good."

"I was _seventeen_ , Clark."

"I'm glad you eventually took enough anatomy lessons to stop drawing abdomen muscles like a mass of bubbles. _Really,_ Bruce." He flipped the page and raised his eyebrows. "Oh, I rather like this one, other than the continuing obsession with pointy shoulders."  
[](http://pics.livejournal.com/mithen/pic/00030448/)  
"Which one was that?" Bruce leapt lightly onto the top of a Baroque armoire and crouched there, clearly ready to spring forward and snatch the notebook if possible. The sight of Bruce Wayne in jeans and a polo shirt perched like Batman, poised and coiled, was distractingly, devastatingly attractive, but Clark was determined not to let his guard down and risk losing his treasure.

"Typical," Clark snorted, "You didn't like it much. _Overall look too 'fancy'? Too much like fashion design?_ Only you would worry about looking too _fancy_ while dressing up as a bat and fighting crime."  
[](http://pics.livejournal.com/mithen/pic/0002yq4t/)  
"I remember that one," Bruce mused. "Stylized."

Clark flipped forward a few more pages. " _Good--but now too much like a bat_" He raised an eyebrow at Bruce over the top of the notebook. "So, that night you told me about...was the bat that crashed into your window wearing gigantic silver pauldrons, gauntlets, and boots? Because unless so, your definition of 'too much like a bat' is baffling me just a little." Bruce just rolled his eyes and didn't deign to answer.

"Good grief!" exclaimed Clark a moment later, looking up from the paper with wide eyes.

Bruce sighed. "Let me guess. The red one?"[](http://pics.livejournal.com/mithen/pic/00031e75/)

"I don't think you can take the shoulder hooks idea any farther than this, Bruce." He shook his head and read, " _Still, 'weird' might be the way to go..._ Yes, I'd say you remained true to that part of your vision, at least."

Bruce scrubbed at his face. "Clark, please...don't turn the page."

Clark paused with the paper between his fingers. "Come on, you can't expect me not to look now. And it can't be worse than this vermilion crime against fashion." His eyes narrowed. "Can it?"

Bruce looked away.

"Impossible," said Clark, and turned the page.

A painful silence fell across the room. Bruce didn't quite wince, waiting.

"Bruce." Clark's voice was stifled. "What...what is this?"

"I. Was. _Seventeen_ ," Bruce articulated carefully.  
[](http://pics.livejournal.com/mithen/pic/00032erw/)  
"I don't believe I have ever seen so many spikes in one place. Bruce, your spikes have spikes on them. You are Mr. Spikey McPokerson. If you tried to fight crime in this, you would risk impaling yourself every time you moved. Bruce," Clark said, a rising note of hilarity in his voice, "Bruce, there are spikes running up your thighs to your ass."

Bruce raised his chin to glare haughtily at his floating, giggling lover. "It seemed like a good idea at the time."

"Well," said Clark, "I see now why you never made fun of Dick for all of his costuming choices. But you've let him think you're a model of sartorial restraint and streamlining, and that seems a little unfair. I think maybe he should have a chance to see--"

Maybe it was his glee, perhaps the tears of laughter in his eyes, but this time he couldn't quite dodge Bruce's leap and the notebook was yanked from his hands. Bruce landed on top of a pile of boxes, teetered alarmingly for a second, then regained his balance and scrambled to the floor. "Hah," he announced, hugging the book close to his chest.

Clark drifted down from the rafters until he was hovering just a few inches above Bruce. "Okay, okay," he said as Bruce tightened his grip, "I'll let you keep your cherished illusions. Now that I've seen your secret peacock side, I'm content."

Bruce glared at him, but when he showed no signs of wanting to reclaim the book, he relaxed slightly. "They're not _all_ horrible," he muttered, looking down at the little leather book, and Clark felt a rush of absurd tenderness.

"Of course not, you impossible man. They're beautiful and dramatic and visionary, just like you, even if you try to hide it under severity."

That made Bruce look up at him, and Clark took the opportunity to lower himself the remaining few inches to that contradictory mouth. Bruce kept a careful hold on the notebook even as the kiss deepened and sweetened, but Clark had no intention of trying to steal it back.

He had a photographic memory, after all.

And now he knew _exactly_ what his costume was going to be for this year's Wayne Charity Costume Ball.


	2. Bat-Fashion Disaster

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dick and Damian come across Bruce's teenaged design notebooks.

"Damian, I don't think you should be doing that." Dick Grayson sighed to himself and wondered if he should just make a recording of that to use and save his voice. "You should be working on your science project."

Damian, still in his hooded cape, was squatting in front of a safe set into the cave wall, twirling the dial and listening to it intently. "You won't let me do anything _interesting_ for my science project, so I am forced to find other ways to stretch my intellect." Dick was forced to admit that he _had_ vetoed Damian's first four science project ideas, but he stood his ground that "How to Deliver Maximum Pain with Minimum Effort: A Study of Pressure Points," "Necrotoxins vs. Neurotoxins: Comparing Brown Recluse and Black Widow Venom," "Tensile Strength of Assorted Garrote Materials," and "Deathtraps for Dummies" were not good ideas for a middle-school science project. 

Now Damian was sulking and fiddling with a safe. "Besides, if Father didn't want me to get into this, he wouldn't have left it out here in the open. Nor would he have been so entirely calm and composed when I asked him what he was putting into it last week."

It was probably better if he got it open while Dick was there to minimize the damage, rather than sneaking back later and opening it unsupervised, so Dick kept one eye on him while running his lab tests. It took a little over thirty minutes, but eventually he heard the safe open with a soft and ominous click. 

"Hmm," Damian said, rummaging. "Red Kryptonite, magic wands, death ray, death ray--freeze ray! Really, Father, how droll--some kind of chalice, presumably magical or something, and--what's this?"

"Looks like an ordinary notebook to me," said Dick, nudging the door shut again as Damian fished out the notebook--better not to keep the Red K out now that Bruce was dating Clark.

_"Exactly,"_ hissed Damian. "So it must be something _very_ important."

Dick peered over his shoulder as he opened it, feeling his eyes widen as the pages turned to reveal adolescent Bruce Wayne's early prototypes for the batsuit: garish Gothic masks, sweeping shoulder hooks, and approximately three million spikes. Damian was unnervingly still and silent as he leafed through the pages almost mechanically, and Dick bit his lip, torn between laughter and dread at the eventual explosion from the little ninja.

The last page fluttered shut and Damian let the notebook fall closed. "Grayson," he said in a very small voice. "My father--these pictures--" He shook his head, overwhelmed. "I never knew that--that my father was so--"

Dick braced himself.

"--I'm not sure the English language has words for it," Damian said. "It's just--" He waved his hands helplessly, overcome.

"Unbelievable?"

Damian looked peeved. "Really Grayson, you think I couldn't have come up with a mundane word like 'unbelievable'? It's certainly that, but it's so, so much more. It's--the word I'm looking for is closer to--"

"...Angular?" Dick tried again.

"If you're just going to mock me, Grayson, your presence is not welcome," Damian sniffed. "I mean-- _my God._ Did you _see_ these sketches?"

"I was looking over your shoulder, yes."

"And? What do you think?"

"Well, they certainly left me...speechless," Dick said.

Damian leapt to his feet. his eyes shining. " _Yes!_ Exactly! Such style! Such flair! Oh, _this_ was a man who understood what it was to use terror against his foes," he said, shaking the notebook with glee and looking very much like the pre-teen he was, although Dick tended to forget it.

"I don't know, Damian," said Dick, "They don't look very practical."

_"Practical?_ These are _art_ , Grayson! Was Picasso impractical? A fighter of _true_ skill would not be impeded by these small embellishments. But then, I wouldn't expect _you_ to understand," he snorted, gesturing at the severe red and black of the Nightwing costume.

For a brief moment, Dick almost regretted that he had managed to keep all images of his earliest Nightwing costume from falling into Damian's hands. Almost.

"I don't understand why my father abandoned these," Damian was saying. "I really think I could work some of these ideas into the Robin costume."

Images of Damian with chitinous silver boots and a cape twice as long as himself froze Dick in horror, and the moment was made complete by hearing the grandfather clock swing open and Bruce and Clark's voices coming down the stairs.

"Father!" Damian ran across the cave, brandishing the notebook up at them. "What is the meaning of this?"

Bruce's eyes widened, then narrowed in a glare that was divided equally between Clark and Dick, both of whom shrugged and gave him their best "Don't look at me" grins. 

"Well, I was...very young," Bruce started, almost apologetically, but Damian cut him off.

"I had _no idea_ you had such vision when you were my age. What happened? When did you become so determined to be as boring as possible?" Damian frowned at the drawings. "Though you don't have any spikes on the masks themselves. A grave oversight--think of how impressive _that_ would look. One can already see the signs of you bowing to convention, even in these brilliant sketches." He made a tsking sound, shaking his head. "It's sad, really."

"I...do have some regrets," Bruce muttered as Clark and Dick shared goggle-eyed looks of delight.

"It's settled, then." Damian wheeled on Dick. "Grayson! I shall do my science project on the effects of embellishments on aerodynamics and _prove_ once and for all that one needn't be bland to be an avenger of the night. Scientific proof!" He nodded fiercely at all of them, jaw set. "And then I shall redesign my Robin costume to be a thing of truly awe-inspiring grandeur!" He stomped upstairs, shouldering past Clark and Bruce, still clutching the notebook. Turning at the top, he announced, "Thank you for the inspiration, Father! I shall make a reality the vision you tragically failed to achieve!"

The door clicked shut and a long silence filled the cave. 

Bruce put his hand to his forehead as if it pained him. "Is he...was he serious? Or is he upstairs right now laughing at all of us?"

Clark shot Dick a smirk and clapped Bruce on the shoulder. "Well, if it's any consolation...I'm absolutely certain he's not laughing at _all_ of us."


	3. Sparks and Spikes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clark decides to go to a costume ball dressed up as one of Bruce's early Batman designs.

As the elevator doors closed, Clark fussed with the shoulders of his costume. It was difficult to keep the points from drooping despite all of his care in choosing materials. The Fortress had refused to help, claiming that the costume design was "overly hazardous to sentient life," although Clark suspected the AI was just aesthetically offended. It had taken a lot of effort, but Clark was certain it would be worth it when he emerged into the ballroom and got a look at Bruce's face at the sight of him, decked out in full teenage-fantasy-spiky-Batman glory. He couldn't help a bit of a satisfied smirk at the thought of it--and why should he, as surely a smirk was an essential part of the _ensemble_ , after all.

This was going to be the best Halloween masquerade Clark had ever--

The elevator stopped three floors short of the ballroom and a figure stepped in to join Clark.

An icy silence descended as Clark took in the trim, streamlined form, clad in a body-hugging electric-blue leotard with a bold, stylized silver-blue "S" zig-zagging across the front. Familiar eyes glinted at him from a--great Scott, the man had actually dyed his face and hair blue. As a final indignity, azure energy danced around the suit, filling the elevator with crackling power.

Clark hit the "stop elevator" button and resisted the urge to bury his face in his hand.

"What," said Bruce's voice from sapphire-tinted lips, "Did you really think I didn't anticipate your costuming choice?"

"That's not fair," Clark said with as much dignity as he could muster while wearing foot-tall shoulder spikes. "I didn't _choose_ to look like that."

"On the other hand, you actually _did_ look like this, while the costume you're wearing never got out of the planning stages," Bruce said cooly. "So which of us is the fashion disaster?"

"You can't go to a ball in that," Clark said, putting his hand out to feel electricity play across it. "You'll electrocute the guests if you dance with them."

"But it's okay if you shish-kebab Vicki Vale?"

"Apparently we're both too dangerous to civilians right now," Clark said, dabbling his fingers in the indigo spray of energy. "Besides which, I'm not sure I want to wait all night to find out whether or not you took the time to paint your entire body blue."

Bruce looked offended, tossing a lock of dark blue hair out of his eyes. "Clark, you've _seen_ my notebooks, so you know I take costuming very seriously. Do you really think I would do a half-assed job?" 

Clark shifted his touch to a sharp blue cheekbone; Bruce rubbed against it like a cat, leaving smudges on the black gauntlet. "I'm pretty sure whatever you do, you do whole-assed."

Bruce drew near, managing to avoid a variety of sharp edges on the elaborate bat-costume. "Oh, here's an extra spike I don't remember including," he said with satisfaction as his hands wandered down Clark's body. "I approve of the improvisation."

"Damn you," Clark said. Bruce's neck tasted like electricity and sweat. "You've got a room reserved on this floor and this is all a plan to keep me too busy to show up at the masquerade in this, isn't it?"

"Mm," Bruce said. "How's it working?"

"You're an evil genius," muttered Clark, mashing the "door open" button.

"It's not me," mumbled Bruce as they staggered down the hall, both doing their best to grope the other, "It's the costume. No one can resist the unearthly sexiness of Electric Blue Superman."

"You never told me you thought it was sexy." They banged against the door; Bruce dodged Clark's hands long enough to produce a key card from somewhere and get it open.

"What was I going to say? 'My valued teammate, your blue skin and incandescent eyes make me want to jump you even more than I usually do?'"

Oh Rao, he really _had_ painted his whole body blue, Clark discovered to his delight. "I wouldn't have minded that a bit," he managed between kisses and licks. He probably looked like a refugee from an _Avatar_ cosplay now, but he didn't care.

"Besides which, it was a vast improvement on the mullet," Bruce announced.

Clark groaned. "Will you _never_ let me live that down? I had just come back from the dead, I'm allowed a small fashion mistake."

"Small? That mullet was anything but--" Bruce stopped talking when Clark did his best to kiss the memory of the mullet right out of him; unfortunately amnesia kisses were not part of his power set, whatever that unauthorized movie they'd made about him claimed. Still, when the kiss was over he'd stopped bringing up Clark's past hairstyles, and Clark was willing to settle for that.

"I promise never to mention the notebook again if you promise to drop some of my more unfortunate choices," Clark breathed against abs like carved turquoise.

"What would be the fun of that?" Bruce's hands were busy with buckles and straps, but eventually he snarled with frustration. "Enough! I'll just take you spikes and all."

"I thought that was my line," smirked Clark, but his smirk fell away with a gasp as Bruce's hands did something quite innovative and his lips followed suit.

Between the electricity and the jagged edges, the bed was quite a dangerous place, but that only seemed to make the challenge more worthwhile.


End file.
